nd-enby-against-the-world

[nd-enby-against-the-world]

[nd-enby-against-the-world]

Ok so I was today's years old when I learned clothes for men and women have buttons on opposite sides - which by itself is insane - but the supposed reason why women's clothes still have buttons on the less convenient side for right handed people is so insane, I can't even... Is that really the reason?

"Make all women clothing have a handicap because once upon a time years ago richest women were dressed by servants"?

[nd-enby-against-the-world]

I’m really bad with names.

And when I say that I mean it in every possible way.

I hate my legal name. I never used it or identified with it. But I also never knew what I would like to change it to. I have used nicknames that other people gave me all my life - like gifts - but it never occurred to me to name myself.

I’m in awe every time I meet a trans/non-binary person who knows what name they are - like I mean the real name of their real self - they are just able to choose one and identify with it. Amazing! But also pretty much black magic for me. How do people do it? How do they know? I have no idea.

I find it almost impossible to remember other people’s names. For me, a name is like an arbitrary sound that I’m supposed to associate with the person but I feel like I have no key to facilitate or even enable that association.

I “grew up” in a role playing community where everyone had nicknames. I didn’t know real names of most of my friends.

I also find it really hard to actually address people by their names even if I remember them. At my job, I am required to address the clients by name while greeting them - haven’t done that once in my 10 years of working there.

And the worst part of writing for me is having to name my characters. There are a lot of stories I started writing and stopped after a few paragraphs, realising I needed to name the characters and then never looking at them again, just so I could avoid the pain of having to match the people I was writing about with names.

In the first short story I completed when I came back to writing, after more or less a 20 year break, the characters had no names and I didn’t even realize that. I just wrote all of it and was pretty happy with myself (not that I thought it was good but being able to actually complete something traslates to dopamine which I always need more of), but then one person read it and said:

“Hey, you know, it’s pretty confusing with all the “he” and “he” - why don’t you just use their names to make things clearer?”

“Why don’t I what…?”

And then I looked at it again… “Wow, you’re right - that’s a lot of ‘he’.” And it didn’t help that both characters were elves and werewolves.

I’m terrible with names, though, so the elf werewolves remain nameless to this day. And I attached an excerpt of the story of those poor nameless dudes - to illustrate just how hopeless I am and how confusing the story is...

So my dear characters: "hello, I love you, won't you tell me your names?"

[nd-enby-against-the-world]

I saw that posted by various people and sure it's true but... When we started playing Warhammer Fantasy Role Play back in the 90's the society collectively decided we were worshipping Satan... So there's that too 😅

[nd-enby-against-the-world]

I always wondered if other people also questioned their humanity. All my life I have felt something was missing - that I was somehow built incorrectly and that was why I couldn't understand other humans or connect with them. Already as a child I had doubts about being a real person - how could I be if I was so different from everyone else?

Then in high school after we watched Blade Runner some of my friends started teasing me by calling me a replicant - and although I know for a fact they didn't mean it in a malicious way, it certainly didn't help me with my daily identity crises...

Even now, years later, having my autism diagnosis and all, I still doubt myself in the same ways in moments of weakness. And often wonder how do people know they are really human.

I guess in a similar way to how I never understood how people knew their gender...

[nd-enby-against-the-world]

It's been almost 4 years since my autism / ADHD diagnosis. But it's still hard for me to accept that maybe I'm not entirely broken and the reason for the things people have always called me out for is the way my brain works.

A big part of me keeps thinking the diagnosis is a lie. That it's just an excuse. That I'm just a complete failure trying to explain it all away to avoid the blame.

Years of conditioning that are so hard to undo.

People often talk about internalised homophobia or transphobia. Or about internalised racism.

I sometimes wonder if that intense feeling of self-loathing I experience is also something similar? Internalised ND-phobia? Or just internalised ableism?

Nobody deserves to be forced to hate themselves for the way they were born.

I say that and I believe it.

And yet it changes nothing for me.

[nd-enby-against-the-world]

Almost a year ago I wrote a short story about two magical beings saving a trans boy and was accused of plagiarising Neil Gaiman. I couldn't gather up after the accusations. I stopped writing and then even stopped talking to ppl. Then someone told me to start a Tumblr account. And I did. I still have no idea why they said that. And I never even did anything with the account - just created it. It didn't help. Obviously. But months have passed and I finally recovered. Somewhat. And found this abandoned account I created back then. And I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with it, but keeping it empty like that feels weird...?